By Casey Chalk, Crisis Magazine, Dec. 15, 2021
Casey Chalk is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands (Sophia Institute Press) and a senior contributor at The Federalist. He holds a Masters in Theology from Christendom College.
All flesh, like grass, withers. So declared the prophet Isaiah, whose words we recently heard in the first reading for the Memorial of St. Ambrose on December 7th. Taken from Isaiah 40:1-11, it reads, in part:
All flesh is grass,
and all their glory like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower wilts,
when the breath of the LORD blows upon it.
So then, the people is the grass.
Though the grass withers and the flower wilts,
the word of our God stands forever.
It’s a sobering thought, that mankind is as vulnerable and ephemeral as the grass we trod over, mow, and throw into the compost heap. …